No Longer Your Muse
by De Fideli
Summary: In which she thrives on different scenery, but he only wishes for her to last as long as the stains of oil paint on his jeans. Oneshot.


**A/N: In my attempt to get through a stoppage of inspiration for I Do Not Love You, I got a prompt from theenjoninestoryteller on tumblr: "If you would be my girl, I would make you stay, so I don't have to say you were the one that got away."**

**My inbox at** **enjolrastic is open for prompts. Love you all!**

* * *

Permanence is a strange thing. As a political activist, he should be completely opposed to it; he revels in change, in the toppling of age-old institutions and the rebirth of ideals in the ashes of the destruction. He understands that transformation is perpetual, as it should be—for so long as man makes progress, so should the governments that rule them. He has devoted his life to understanding that he, as an agent of change, must subject himself to the constancy of his work.

But if he were truly honest with himself, he is a man of permanence in many aspects. He prefers nothing added to his fair-trade coffee; he always tucks the daily newspaper in his left arm, his leather messenger bag strap placed atop the right shoulder in his morning commute. Most evident, however, of his preference to routine is his daily schedule. Life based around unpredictable political events requires a more loose structure than what he prefers, but when the clock strikes upon the eighth hour of the evening, he devotes himself to work.

When his mates express their desire to celebrate, to go to the nearest bar, he rejects; first politely, and then sternly. When they insist, he sends them a furious look that has even the most adamant ones rethinking their request.

His reactions are no different when Courfeyrac mentions the new exhibition he has on display, and the social gathering held in his gallery he wishes for his most serious friend to attend. "She's brilliant, Enjolras," he gushes. "It's a trade-off sometimes; the best artists have given too much of themselves that they don't exist in the real world anymore. But she's still real, and she'd love to meet you all."

He tries his polite response. "I'd love to, but I have work."

"Too bad, I told her you would be there," his friend replies, paying no heed to the schedule he knows all too well.

"I'm glad you've graced yourself with the permission of making commitments for me," his reply drips with sarcasm. "But no."

"This isn't a choice," Courfeyrac tells him, and Enjolras does not even need to shoot his glare to realize resistance is futile. He'll go—but he will only go for the sake of not attending anything else in the next year or so. Some sacrifices must be made, he supposes.

* * *

He finds himself in front of a large portrait; he has never understood art, possessing nothing close to Courfeyrac's passion towards the battles of light and dark, of surface and depth, but he finds himself fascinated. There is an unbridled rawness in the harsh strokes, and he feels the anger of the crimsons stomping along the canvas.

"His name's Claude," a voice behind him says, and he turns around to see her: a petite figure dressed in black, looking at the same portrait he had been studying for the past five minutes. He is sure that she is the artist, but he even doubts himself when she stares at the painting like she herself had not done it. "He was so mad at the system," she laughs to herself.

"Rightfully so," Enjolras replies without a second thought. Revolution flows in his veins, travels in his synapses, and sits at the tip of his tongue in every conversation.

She turns her attention back to him, studying his profile. "I'm Eponine," she smiles, and proceeds to ask with an unprecedented bluntness towards the man so respected and admired among his peers. "Can I paint you?"

He almost reacts to her boldness—almost. But he does not even flinch in his quick denial. "No."

"Well I will anyway," she says, unfazed, snapping a picture of his unexpecting visage on the polaroid film camera he did not notice she was holding. "You belong to the people, don't you?"

He does not answer—he does, he supposes so, but he's never thought of it that way.

* * *

He sees her again as she sits with Courfeyrac and Marius in the activist cafe they frequent. He averts his gaze to the dark, uniform mixture of his coffee, but she makes it a point to stare at him until he is uncomfortable.

When he finally feels forced enough to return the gaze, she gets up from her place in the table and approaches him. "I finished you," she announces to him while he is mid-sip, resorting to looking away from her once more. It's too bad that she has enough energy that he does not even need sight to know she is there.

"That's nice," he replies, pulling out the newspaper tucked underneath his left arm hoping to be left alone.

"Come on," she tugs at his arm, shaking the coffee mug in his hand causing the dark brown liquid to soak the sleeves of his white dress shirt.

He is in the process of mustering up the deadliest look, but when he finally meets her eyes, she claims victory with her own glare. "You're absolutely crazy," he mutters as he puts his coffee down and folds his paper back up, getting up from his stool to follow her out of the door.

He cannot tuck his paper back underneath his left arm because she has grabbed the respective hand, and he grumbles at the discomfort of change.

He is not surprised to find that she lives with the other starving artists of the district, and when she slides her large metal door open, the industrial loft is as cluttered as he expects it to be. He supposes there is a living space buried somewhere among the dropcloths, but a canvas or a set of brushes or a paint can sits atop whatever flat surface exists.

They are all portraits, he notices; wires and clothespins hang on her walls, with photographs of tremendous variety in both the shadows and sunlight seeping through her blinds."People are interesting," she explains, needing no prompt of a question.

She finally makes her way to the space in the living room furthest from the door, where a large canvas leans against a dropcloth-covered wall. It is him, composed of scarlets and blacks, but he chooses not to mention that she has chosen his favorite color combination. He has a feeling she knows already, anyway.

"You can have it," she offers.

"What would I do with a gigantic portrait of myself?" he scoffs. When she looks at him offended, he sighs. "Sorry. But don't you want to keep your work?"

She shrugs. "You don't belong to me," she replies. "And neither does anyone else. I drew you, I got to know you, and that's enough."

* * *

He is the first to know her in a long time. At first, he convinces himself that his need for coffee is due to the increase of demanding work; and then he looks into the development of the arts district.

But fate forgives him for lying to himself by letting her step onto the sidewalk right when he walks by, and she always offers to sit with him for his morning coffee on a nearby bench.

He finally offers to buy her one of the pricey drinks that she, barely making it with her odd jobs, cannot afford like he does. He tells her that it does not hurt to support the fair trade, and she tells him that supporting the man down the street with the struggling business will probably do just as much good. So he deviates from his fair-trade coffee, and that is the start of the friendship.

He learns that she didn't intend on starting art—in fact, her thirteen year old self did not mean for her art teacher to catch her sniffing paint thinners. As punishment, the man made her hold a brush to the point where it almost became a limb to her.

He learns that she is not from the city—it is her third year there, and she spent three years a hundred miles away, and three years before that on her first adventure after high school. He learns that she will continue to move until she finds a home, and three years is her trial period.

They are walking out of the park, and she has finally finished her conversation with the man in the ice cream truck, and her happiness over the Klondike bar trumps her concern of the chocolate around her lips. It even causes her to ignore the incoming traffic, but he reaches out and grasps her right hand with his left to stop her, causing his beloved daily paper to fall out. He starts tucking his paper in his right arm from then.

His daily schedule makes room for her impromptu visits; it starts when she finds the address to his office, and she waits for him on the sidewalk after work. He wants to tell her of his eight o'clock rule, but she's too busy raving about a new neighborhood she has explored; she wins when she tells him of a bookstore, and they spend the evening discussing Sydney Carton. She is more than apt at literature, but he knows how strongly she feels about opting out of higher education.

They run into Courfeyrac and Marius on a walk downtown in the daylight, and Courfeyrac only raises an eyebrow with an amused smile. "I didn't know you were good friends," he observes. Neither did Enjolras.

* * *

He is sitting on her couch as he watches her work, wisps of her hair escaping the disheveled braid she attempted and framing her face against the fluorescent light. Edith Piaf travels across the room, and she sings along dramatically, the rhythm of her brush accompanying the music in uncanny synchronization.

They converse, and she tells him about how she moved in the heat of July. He frowns to himself; it is June, and he realizes she is leaving soon. But she is so joyous dipping the bristles into a canary yellow that he decides the conversation should wait until later.

He begins to realize how much of her has weaved into his life, that the changes she has brought upon him have helplessly turned into permanence.

He attempts to undo it the next week; he calls her phone, expressing the urgent demand of his work. He tells her not to wait for him in her usual spot, and when he walks out of the office, he does not know how to feel when she is not there.

She calls, and he does not answer. He does not want another impromptu adventure; he wants his life back. Slowly, the calls become more spaced out—he still does not know how to feel.

After the second week, when he is finally back to his fair-trade black coffee in his apartment untucking the paper from his left arm, he hears the knock. "Open up, asshole, I know you're in there," she shouts through the door. "I know how much it pisses your neighbors off when someone's yelling in the hallway."

Of course she would remember something as trivial as that. He groans and opens the door. "Can I help you?"

"You've been avoiding me," she states flatly, no question present in her words as she enters the apartment without his permission.

"You're leaving," he replies.

"So that's why?" she asks. "You know, most people settle for some sort of goodbye, maybe a beer or two, but not the immature cold shoulder. I thought we were past that level."

"It doesn't matter what level we're on, Eponine," he snaps. "You're going to leave no matter how much you screwed up all that I've known, and you don't think anything of it."

"You got to know me; I got to know you; isn't that enough?" she is almost yelling. "What more do you fucking want, Enjolras?"

"You think that's all there is to it!" he yells. "You don't hold any importance to a friendship, or a relationship, or whatever the hell this thing you got me into is."

"That was your choice! I didn't force you into anything," she roars.

He sighs, dejectedly, running a hand through his hair in frustration. "It's my fault as much as it is yours. But it's too late for any of that," he laughs weakly.

"What do you mean?" she asks, her voice hushed into brokenness at the finality in his words.

"I mean that you belong to me, and I to you, Eponine," he replies, placing his hands on her shoulders. "I'm not a painting that you finished; you made me more than that, and I fucking _let _you. I forgot that you don't want permanence, but you shouldn't have let me think otherwise."

She looks at him sadly. "Who says I don't?" She rummages through her purse and takes out a folded piece of paper, handing it to him. It takes him a few seconds to recognize the renewed lease.

She smiles because she found home.

He smiles because she is permanent.


End file.
